What a mess. What happened to international sport? Where did those lofty ideals of fairness, honesty and hard-working competitiveness go to?

First it was FIFA, left worthless in a flurry of revelations about corruption. And now the Olympics and International athletics, brought down by cases of pharmacological enhancement. Oh, and by Russia.

Though not exclusively.

Drugs have been rife in athletics for decades. I remember watching Ben Jonson beating Carl Lewis in 1988 and thinking ‘wow!’ He was fast. Superfast. Steroid-fast, as it turned out and his gold was taken away and he was shamed. But he wanted to beat Lewis and really there was no other way but cheating.

During the Cold War years the East German women were fed on testosterone from birth so that by the time they reached maturity they could shot put like no women before them. They also had facial hair issues, weighed 20 stone and suffered male pattern baldness.

Really its all about nationalism, rather than individuals. Lance Armstrong is an obvious exception. But for Russia; cold, arrogant, image-obsessed Russia, they have to be seen as the ‘perfect nation’ because that would justify, in their eyes, all the shit that goes on there. Starvation. Secret Police. Gulags in Siberia. That shit. “yes, but look how great we are at sport, how we are superior to all the capitalist nations on the planet, so our communism is the best, healthiest, winningest way”. Yeah, right. And don’t use the word ‘winningest’; the Americans have sole rights on that one.

So the entire Russian athletics team is pumped full of steroids. Sponsored by the government, aided by the Sports Ministry, probably signed off by Putin himself. Its not the cheating itself that so cynical but the sheer scale of the problem in Russia. And apparently in Turkey too. Though not with quite so much success for the Turks.

So whilst we ponder what we need to do about Russia (World Cup there in 3 years; Olympics coming up next year; barely time to get the drugs out of their systems), let’s take one minute to look at Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi seems to have won an election, although in a much more meaningless way than winning elections normally implies. But one problem in Burma is the hatred there for the Muslim minority, treated so badly they’re not allowed to vote, get thrown out of their houses, have to live in walled compounds for protection. Because of ‘militant Bhuddists’.

How can you be a militant Bhuddist? Its a complete contradiction. Like being a ‘nice Chelsea fan’. A Bhuddist extremist is one who never actually moves. Just sits under a tree every day contemplating his former lives. How do you get from there to ‘militant’?

I want to see one.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx